


The Seafloor Fusion

by GrapieBee, Pubbits



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Mermaids, mermaid!au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2018-12-11 12:30:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11714436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrapieBee/pseuds/GrapieBee, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pubbits/pseuds/Pubbits
Summary: Where he had expected to see something predatory, all he saw was something all too familiar: fear.





	1. Shared Fear

**Author's Note:**

> Basics here, Hylians in this AU are what you would think of traditionally as mermaids/mermen. Zoras look similar to how the do in game, except that their bottom half is a tail.
> 
> Hylians are mostly gatherers and are caught not for their meat, but for their beauty. Zoras are carnivores and aren't actively hunted, so much as traps are set out around areas that humans want to deter them from.
> 
> More world clarification will come as we go!

It all starts with a glint of light catching his eye. The waters of the normal scavenging grounds are warm and clear. It doesn’t take Link long to notice that the light came from bouncing off the red scales of a Zora. It’s just a glimpse, a tiny look out of the corner of his eye, but he knows that color anywhere. 

Panic filling him instantly, he flattens himself against the reef, curling his tail to his chest. 

A moment passes, then seconds, and then minutes, with nothing happening. Cautiously, he relaxes himself and peeks out from his hiding spot. The sight that meets his eyes was not something he’d ever seen before.

True, while the red he had seen did in fact belong to the scales of a Zora, the reason for his continued safety was unprecedented.

It was trapped; trapped in something intended to trap Hylians, not Zoras. It was still, seemingly all the fight already gone from it, its giant body thoroughly entangled in the netting. If he wasn’t being stared down by an apex predator, he might have laughed at the absurdity of such a large being wrapped up in such a small trap. 

But he was, so he didn’t.

He paused, locking eyes with the Zora, his heart thumping in his ears. He’d never seen one this up close before, never this big, never this still and all of it, all of him, was a lot to take in. It was his eyes though, shockingly yellow with pupils like slivers of darkness, that shook him to his core. Where he had expected to see something predatory, all he saw was something all too familiar: fear.

He bit the inside of his cheek, a crazy, flat out  _ insane _ idea taking hold of him.He swallowed hard, grit his teeth, and swam out from his hiding spot before he could change his mind.

Link’s hands shake just the slightest as he pulls at the wire netting, confused and wary. In all his years, he had never seen a Zora trapped before; let alone trapped in a net designed for Hylians.

The cord was thicker than his own fingers. The corners weighted with stones and ends pulled together by strong magnets. These were terrible things, designed to trap but never hurt. What good would it be to a fisher if their catch wasn't unscathed and beautiful?

Link shuddered at the thought and set himself to work. He was slow and methodical in trying to pry the magnets away from each other. Though the incredibly large Zora had been still since his approach, he had no desire to startle it. They were apex predators and never skipped a chance to kill if they could. Or so he had heard.

When the trap barely budges, Link let’s go with a huff. The Zora, the shape of the fin along his head confirming for him that it’s a male, only watches him. His pupils are no more than black slivers at this point, twitching and flittering around as he watched every move Link made, all the way down to the rise and fall of his chest. It’s...unnerving, to say the least.

Link backed away for a second, surveying the net once more. With a sigh, he started to formulate a plan B. The Zora had managed to entangle so many parts of himself in the net, no doubt from trying to struggle, that Link really only had one option left to try.

His hand slowly slid down to the small, razor sharp knife that swayed with the current at his side, deliberate in his movements.

In addition to their supposedly vicious instincts, Link had always been told Zora were inclined to react poorly if they were threatened, even in the slightest. He paused a beat and locked eyes with the trapped giant.

“I’m going to try and cut you loose. I have to pull my knife out for that. Do you understand me?”

The Zora’s pupils grew ever so slightly at Link’s words, rounding out until they were more oval in shape.

Another beat and he nodded, the movement stilted by the netting.

Swimming closer once more, Link pulled the knife from his side and began to work. His hands were well practiced with the small blade, but it took time and patience when it came to breaking down a net like this.

It was forty-five minutes later, Link’s nearly bottomless patience almost gone, that his knife cuts through the last knot holding the Zora in place.

Link’s whoop of triumph is cut short as the net falls away and reality sets back in. The Zora, now free and unencumbered, unfurled to his full size. Easily two times larger than himself, Link silently wondered if all Zora were this huge.

Instinctively, Link swims backwards ever so slightly as the giant’s attention turns to him once more. In an instant, before Link could even react, the Zora has lunged forward and Link expected teeth and pain and blood-

Instead the crest of a head bumps Link softly against the ear. He freezes, every muscle in his body pulled taunt, as he realizes this giant had its mouth pressed against where his neck meets shoulder, breathing in deeply. 

The Zora growls, or maybe it’s more of a purr, and Link’s thoughts linger for a moment on the knife still in his hand. He knew, or at least had been told, about the rows of razor sharp teeth that all Zora have, how they used them almost exclusively to hunt big game. One wrong move, one snap of that jaw, and it would be his end. Maybe if he was fast enough- but god this creature had been too fast for him to see- he could get away, or at least frighten it-

And again, before Link can so much as make a decision, the lips are gone and the owner with them, a streak of red the only thing left in his mind’s eye.

As soon as his thoughts catch up with him, he lets out a shaky breath that he had no idea he was holding. His knife almost slips from his hand as every muscle relaxes with a shudder.

Shaking his head, he sheaths the blade once more and gathers his empty sack from where it hung on a rock. As he leaves, he casts a wary eye behind him, hoping that he would find no hunkering mass of red chasing after him.

All he sees are the remnants of the net, laying along the rocky seafloor. A frown pulls at his face, his shoulders and hands still shaking ever so slightly. He turns his attention forward and propels himself through the water, glad that the situation was done and over with.

Oh, how very wrong he had been.


	2. Gnawing Metal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Link hibernates.

As the days turned to weeks, the incident slowly slipped to the back of Link’s mind. The cold season was mounting and preparing to hibernate was always an undertaking, to say the least. Every helping hand was needed and, so, the Zora was not in his thoughts for many months.

Link was small and always had been. At every turn, he had to show time and time again that he could pull his own weight, could contribute to the community in the way it needed him to. That meant extra trips out to collect food, materials, anything that was needed. 

Even still, going above and beyond time and time again, he could not deny the disadvantages of being the figurative runt of your generation. It was only two weeks into the newest warm season, where Hylians his age were the already up and moving freely from their deep, cold sleep. 

He was awake, yes.

He’d had a full day to bask in the surface sun, safe in numbers and temperatures still too cold for humans to bear on the waters, yes. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t use another full day in the sun to warm his skin, perhaps another ration of hearty snails or oysters, or even just a mouthful of sea greens.

But the food stores were low, dangerously low, and that always put a certain amount of pressure on those in the community who could rouse themselves sooner than others. 

All of these things created enough of a perfect storm that Link found himself hungrier, colder, and more tired then he would have liked when he was caught in a Zora trap.

For a Zora, who relied so much more on their sense of smell, the traps were dangerous and messy. The stench of metal that would normally permeate from them was camouflaged by a layer of fat, smeared on thickly and mixed with fish guts. 

Normally they were easy enough for a Hylian to avoid; their eyesight was sharp, even in murky water, and could usually spot the the brightly colored buoys that bobbed along at the surface of the water.

Even still, with Link hardly able to keep his eyes open, barely able to keep his wits about him, all the good eyesight in the world would not have been able to help him as the trap, spring loaded half moons lined with hundreds of needle sharp points, snapped shut around him. He yelped in pain as the sharp and jagged teeth of the trap sank into the flesh of the center most part of his tail.

It was an immediate and consuming agony that had him instinctively throwing his hands back to the trap, pushing against the terrible metal clamped around him. The metal was slimy with the coating of fat on the trap and any grip he might have been able to leverage was lost to him. Still, he pulled and pushed, trying to find some edge, some corner of this terrible thing to pry open with his fingernails.

But his hands found nothing and his flailing did nothing but cause him more pain as the maw of the trap torn deeper and deeper into his flesh. His heart thudded in his chest, his hands and shoulders shook, his teeth grit in a primal terror. As he struggled, as the pain started to become nearly unbearable, a part of him realized that a cloud of pink water had bloomed out around him. Gods, if he wasn’t quick about this, there was no telling what might come his way for an easy meal.

He refused to look down, refused to look head on at the damage the trap had done; the tearing, ripping feeling was enough to tell him that if he did manage escape this, getting home would be another story, let alone trying to heal. 

He gulped brokenly, trying to keep his wits about him as he pushed those thoughts aside. He had to do this bit by bit. Step by step. He needed to get out of this first, needed to escape, needed to pull himself free somehow...

It was as he was taking a steadying breath that the most subtle of movements caught his eye. A streak of red, the fluttering sound of a fin beating the water around it, and a familiar Zora face was in front of him.

It might have been the shock of the situation, the tremendous thudding of his heart, the tearing, searing pain in his tail, the blood rushing from his body, but Link found his head suddenly swimming from it all, his vision rapidly going dark.

The last thing he can recall before an unnatural blackness pulls him under to unconsciousness is the sound for metal creaking and tearing, and the feeling of hands large enough to crush his head holding him delicately.

Than he was sunk, asleep, his pain for the moment forgotten.


	3. Blood and Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Zelda sees something.

The poor Zora feels like he’s out of the water and fading in the blazing sun as he holds the Hylian in his arms. His form is small, almost painfully so, and feels near delicate. The terrible injuries he had just suffered sit painfully stark in contrast with the color of his tail. Sidon had seen plenty of carnage in his days, even being the cause of it from time to time, but those Zora traps were things of torture. 

His thoughts are cut short as a pained murmur rumbled from the body in his arms.

Even though he’d lost enough blood to lose consciousness, the Hylian is breathing. Every breath is slow, methodical, like the current around them, as his gills softly open and close. He was alive, but Gods knew if he would make it through the day with the way he was bleeding.

Holding the other as tightly to his chest as he dared, he speeds off towards the deeper waters that he calls home.

Unbeknownst to him, a pair of green eyes watched on from behind a rock as he disappeared into the darkness. They belonged to the village leader’s daughter, Zelda, and they were filled with fear and helplessness as she watched her only friend be stolen to the depths, likely to his death.

\------------------------

Rhoam was what one would call a firm-handed leader.

True, his methods were sometimes utilitarian, but only a handful of Hylians had died in the years under his care, nearly all from a natural cause of some sort. The few whispers behind his back that ever made it to his ears silently wounded him, time and time again.

Scraps of conversations overheard, Hylians quietly wondering if his predecessor had been a better leader because she had always allowed for certain small pleasures. Murmurs from those of his generation and older, wondering time and time again why they did not follow the yearly migration patterns as they once had, why they forwent the traditional celebrations that came with it. Even those from the younger generations, grumbling and bemoaning the fact that they we not given the same sort of coming of age ceremony that their parents had spoken so highly of.

But he knew; knew that being alive and slightly bored at times was always better than putting yourself in danger. Migrating had always been a time of celebration and _mourning_ , as it was always guaranteed that a handful of Hylians were lost during the trip. Festivals brought unwanted attention to where they lived and were often tied to the ebb and flow of nature itself, something that could and had been predicted by hunters in the past.

Life in the great sea was never, ever a given. No matter how hard you tried to keep your people safe, no matter how big of a safety net you crafted, there could always be something around the corner, ready to rip it apart. So, they stay put. Under his rule, they adapted to hibernation and kept no set home. Each season, each year, they moved their homes, their lives, even if it was only by a mile or two, it was often enough to keep a hunter’s net from their front door.

But, as things have a tendency to do, things changed. Years of careful consideration, all undone by a single day.

The morning started like the last few had; assigning the day’s task to those Hylians young and spry enough to have already shaken loose from the grogginess that hibernation brought. Some were sent to gather food to supplement their depleted stocks. Some were sent to scope out last year’s village, to see if the site was still safe enough to use for a third year in a row. A handful were asked to escort some of the eldest in the community to the surface for their first sunbath of the season. Others still were asked to stay behind and help with the youngest of them.

He had so wished that Zelda, his one and only child, had taken his recommendation on escorting her elders to the surface. Had so wished that he had said no to her insistence that she help gather food. She’d reminded him, as she had so many times in the last year, that this would be the seventeenth summer since her birth. Reminded him that she was nearly full grown and should be involved with the responsibilities expected of a Hylian her age anyways. While all of this was true, it was only when he had reasoned with himself that it was still too early in the season for anything dangerous to be out and about, that he conceded to her wish.

It was when the gathering group came back not but a few hours later, far too early for this sort of task, that he knew something was amiss.

“What’s going on here,” he began as the last few  “surely your packs aren’t full alread-”

“They’re not full, Chief Rhoam. We came back because Zelda thinks she saw-”

“Tylin, I told you I don’t _think_ I saw something, I _know_ I saw something.” Zelda said perhaps a bit too loudly, ushering in the very last of the gathering group.

Rhoam was taken aback for but a second at the ice in his daughter’s normally sweet voice. He looked her over, a special sort of fear filling him as he saw the way her hands shook, how pale she looked around her gills, how panicked her eyes were.

“Zelda, your tone, please.” He said, firmly. He did not need others thinking he valued his own daughter’s word over anyone else’s.

Zelda blinked and turned her focus to him, wringing the strap of her sack in her hands as she did so.

“Father, please, I know what I saw. Please, we don’t have a moment to wait, that Zora was so fast and Link looked so hurt-”

Rhoam, his own panic begin to rise at the mere mention of the word Zora, grabbed her by her shoulders, shaking her slightly as he did so.

“Where Zelda, where did you see the Zora?”

It was too early in the season for Zora to be active, let alone be anywhere near their current place of refuge. But if it was in range of attacking a gathering group, if one of their own had already been taken out by it, he needed to see it for himself, before he made a terribly tough decision.

\--------------------------

In waters deep enough to only just be touched by sunlight, Sidon watches from the entrance of the cave his sister used for healing as Mipha sets to work on the small Hylian. Luminous stones embedded into the walls and floors, the room glowed a soft blue, plenty of light for Zoran eyes to see every detail around them.

Mipha needed it, given the condition the Hylian had come to her in.The bleeding had finally been stopped, but not soon enough that other Zora hadn’t tried to approach with a hungry, curious sort of interest. That amount of blood in the water usually meant enough food to feed the tribe for a few days, so a part of him couldn’t fault them for their innate pull to the scent, even if they weren’t inclined to feed on Hylians. Another part of him was angered by this, this instinctual interest in blood, making him literally snap at those that got too close. It was so uncharacteristic of him, that many of the other Zora simply stared at him in confusion, before quickly swimming off, mumbling to themselves worriedly.

“Rest easy, brother dear. They wouldn’t dare do anything while I’m here anyways.”

Mipha’s soft voice called to him as he growled at yet another passerby, a smile awaiting him as he turned his attention back to her.

“Will he be alright?” He questioned as he fully entered the cave.

She looked up at him, her electric eyes calm like the waters of a lake. He knew, though, that when push came to shove, those calm eyes could fill with a fiery rage that could undo even the strongest of their tribe’s hunters. There was a very good reason that, even as the smallest Zora of the past three generations, she was the tribe’s leader and had not been contested for that role in the ten years since she took it from her predecessor. That and her leadership had seen them expand in numbers and still be exceedingly well fed, something that _no one_ would complain about.

The blonde Hylian is still as stone where he lays, a special concoction of mud and herbs caked onto his wounds and wrapped up in a thick, heavy seaweed that came from Mipha’s own wild garden. So many were his wounds, all from struggling against the terrible teeth of that Zora trap, that his fine blue tail looked practically green at this point.

“He will be fine, with time, since none of his wounds are deep enough to be truly tragic. He looks smaller than any other Hylian I’ve ever seen; perhaps that is why the blades were unable to go deeper than they did, since those traps are made for someone more akin to your size, Sidon.” Mipha said, gently moving a tangled strand of hair out of the short earing the Hylian wore. “But even still, he will be faced with a long recovery, there’s no doubt in my mind about that.”

As she said this, the injured Hylian groaned softly in pain as he gingerly pulled his arms to his chest, shivering slightly.

Mipha’s brow furrowed as she carefully placed her palm to his cheek, cupping it slightly.

“It makes sense, that he would be unaccustomed to the temperature of the water at this level. Sidon, would you be willing to grab a heating stone; he needs to stay warm, especially with the amount of blood he’s lost.”

“Of course, I’ll be right back.” A part of him feels that he says this almost too quickly, almost too willingly.

But, he reasons with himself as he all but jettisons himself back to his own cave, it’s not uncommon to want to return a life debt when given the chance, right?

He pushed the thought to the back of his mind as he gathered not just one, but all three of the heating stones he kept on hand, should the nights grow particularly cold during the winter. They were large, somewhat benign looking pitch black rocks, embedded heavily with rubies, shaped and formed for this practical purpose.

“Sidon, what’s this I hear about you causing a ruckus?”

Sidon fumbles with the stones for a moment, startled from his thoughts by the sound of his best friend’s voice at the doorway.

“Bazz, how many times have I asked you not to surprise me like that?” He said as he snapped his attention to the other Zora.

“Oh, I don’t know, why don’t you tell me about why you smell like blood and we’ll call it an even hundred?” Bazz said with a grin, pleased with himself.

Sidon held Bazz’s gaze for a long moment before he sighed, trying his best to move past him without a word.

“Aw, not even a clue for your best pal?” Bazz asked as Sidon all but brushed past him and back out the cave.

“Look, it’s nothing. It’s just a Hylian that was caught in a Zora trap is all. I just couldn’t leave him like that, you know?”

Bazz was shoulder to shoulder with him as they swam, Sidon conscious of his pace so that the other Zora could easily  keep up with him.

“Hmmm, didn’t you say a Hylian helped you escape a trap a few months back?”

Sidon’s mouth drew into a thin line at those words; he had so hoped his tribe would finally leave that fact be.

It was bad enough that he had returned from his first precious stone hunt nearly empty handed, he didn’t need the reminder that the whole debacle had culminated in having a Hylian cut him loose from a trap that wasn’t even intended to catch something like him in the first place.

Sidon sped up, ever so slightly, leaving Bazz’s question hanging.

“Hey hey hey, slow down there partner! I’m just curious whether or not it’s the same Hyl-”

“Look,” Sidon started as he came to a sudden halt to turn and fully address Bazz, “I appreciate all the concern you seem to have about this situation, but Mipha and I have it under control, ok?”

Before Bazz can say another word, Sidon is gone with an incredibly powerful flip of his tail.

Bazz finds himself staying there for a long moment after, his sharp teeth gently worrying his bottom lip.

Zora were known for breaking bones and tearing flesh, for their might and their power.

Hylians were known for their beauty, their charms, for their ability to break a thousand hearts with a single look.

He just didn’t want to see his friend get his own heart broken.

\---------------------------

Rhoam stared, mouth slightly agape, at the mangled Zora trap, claw and teeth marks maring it in a spectacularly horrible fashion.

Once Zelda had finished explaining what she saw in full, how she had heard Link yell out in pain only to see his bloodied body being taken to the depths by a giant Zora, he’d all but sprung into action.

Calling back the groups he had sent out only a few hours before, trying to convince everyone that, no, this was not a drill, without raising his voice, had been trying. Pulling together a group of volunteers to scope out the site that Zelda had mentioned in detail, that was easy.

No one had seen a Zora in person since before Rhoam had become chief. The men, younger than himself, no doubt had felt they were gaining favor with him by running on a fool’s errand.

By the time they found the blood soaked bag that had no doubt belonged to Link, every single one of them had the same fear in their eyes that Zelda had returned with.

Something was hunting them and that something had razor teeth that had tasted Hylian blood.


End file.
